Palm Oil — Look - Creative agency

Exploring the global controversy — and the way forward.

Harvesting and processing the world’s most versatile and least expensive vegetable oil has been linked to massive greenhouse gas emissions, as well as labor and human rights abuses. This Vogue story is an up-close look at Malaysian Borneo's palm-oil plantations amid the global controversy.

A drone photograph of plantation-worker dormitories in Sumatra.

Female farm workers hold bags of Canadian potash fertilizer.

At a Borneo mill, fruit collected from nearby fields awaits processing.

An old section of the plantation, just prior to replanting.

Mothers leave their children at an on-site daycare center while they work, applying fertilizers and spraying defoliants and pesticides. The clothing they are photographed in—protective masks, plastic aprons, and rubber gloves and boots—is now required on the plantation.